Personal Statement - Adrienne Belser
A wave of nervous excitement washed over me as I walked into the robotics room for the first time in 6th grade. For months I had been overflowing with anticipation for this day. I was an inquisitive child, always taking things apart to see how they worked and watching endless episodes of How it’s Made with my dad before bedtime. I was infatuated with understanding how the world worked, so I thought robotics would be the perfect way to nourish my ever-growing curiosity.
As my love for robotics grew, so did my success. My team started as one out of 20,000 teams, but by the end of the season, we were in the top 1,600 teams headed to the Vex IQ World Robotics Championship in Louisville, Kentucky. Stepping into the convention center, I felt comforted knowing all my hard work had finally paid off, though it hadn’t been easy.
For months, robotics competitions had swallowed my weekends whole, and all I was left with was declined birthday invitations and no free Saturdays. Looking back, all those long days have blurred into one; what stands out to me most isn’t the wins or losses, but the constant recurring mantra of “Girl-Power.”
The “Girl-Power” campaign was made with girls just like me in mind. Its goal was to uplift women and motivate them to pursue typically male-dominated fields like robotics. But with every mention of it, “Girl-Power” took on a more negative connotation. Still, I could never pinpoint exactly why I took such offense to it. Wasn’t it made to encourage me? I was baffled until one of my female teammates and I won a top award in the competition. An official came up to congratulate us: “I love to see ‘Girl-Power’ in action.” he said. “Good job girls!” That's when it hit me.
Every ounce of pride I felt for winning that award drained out of me immediately. I felt so alienated from any boy at that competition; I couldn’t understand what made my “power” any different from the boys’. It already took a lot of guts to pursue a male-dominated field or activity, so the constant mention of “Girl-Power” only made me feel more like an outcast. I said thank you and went on my way, pondering why this interaction was so upsetting to me. I finally concluded that it was the constant tokenization of girls that offended me so deeply. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, solely based on something I had no control over: my gender. I slowly began to drift from robotics, despite my great success.
In those months away from robotics, I really missed it. I came to realize that I was still incredibly passionate about STEM. So I decided to revisit it, but this time with a focus on science. I was determined to succeed, now that I was older and not seeking any glory or affirmation from others. My reentry into STEM was entirely out of self-motivation. I had finally realized that I couldn’t rely on campaigns like “Girl-Power” to empower me. Campaigns like this only made me feel like I was different when in reality, I was just as smart or even smarter than all the boys.
Ultimately, I found my “Girl-Power” was the resilience to stick with something, even when I felt like I didn’t belong. A simple catchphrase cannot remove the stigma around women in STEM or how isolating that can feel; creating an environment that’s welcoming is one of the most important steps to increasing the number of women in STEM-related fields. It’s imperative to supply women with the proper resources and mentoring to help them grow. As I continue on my journey through STEM, I strive to surround myself with peers and mentors that will promote growth, help me become more resilient, and make me feel as if I truly belong.